Though author Manal Al-Sharif grew up as a devoutly fundamentalist Muslim in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, she later received a technical education that led to a job as a computer security engineer. In Daring to Drive, she relates how she publicized a protest movement, the Women2Drive campaign, with a video recording of herself driving a car. This eye-opening memoir vividly portrays the customary restrictions on girls and women in her country as well as the difficulties of pushing for social change. For additional insight into women's lives in Saudi Arabia, try Jean Sasson's Princess or Carmen bin Ladin's Inside the Kingdom.

In A Beautiful, Terrible Thing, author Jen Waite movingly reveals the disintegration of her relationship with her husband, which began when she confronted him about a disturbing email from another woman. In alternating chapters that either depict her idyllic life with him before she realized he wasn't the person he claimed to be, or portray the anguish of her gradual discoveries about his personality, Waite's memoir offers a "frank and visceral" (Kirkus Reviews) warning to others who may have a tendency to dismiss potential red flags.

In this well-researched group biography that reads like a spy thriller, author Karen Abbott portrays some unusual participants in the American Civil War. Four women aided their causes (two on the Union side and two for the Confederacy) by going against expected norms to collect and pass on valuable information. Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy weaves together parallel accounts of the women's activities and includes additional historical details about other women who assumed unconventional roles during the war.

CIA agent and counterterrorism expert Henry Crumpton recounts his 25-year career as a spy in this absorbing and eye-opening memoir. Providing descriptions of espionage duties from routine administration to the challenges of field espionage, he relates his early advocacy of spy drones and critiques both the Bush and the Obama administrations' actions regarding the CIA. The Art of Intelligence presents an "entertainingly frank" (The Washington Post) insider view of the Agency that espionage and history buffs won't want to miss.

In The Devil's Chessboard, author David Talbot, founding editor-in-chief of Salon, provides chilling details of 1950s CIA Director Allen Dulles' secret influence during and after World War II. With deep connections to powerful business interests, attorney Dulles planned to fight Communism after the war -- in cooperation with German capitalists. Later, he went well beyond intelligence gathering to promote covert actions around the world, including a coup in Iran and the Bay of Pigs debacle in Cuba. For additional recent studies of Dulles, check out Scott Miller's Agent 110 and Stephen Kinzer's The Brothers.

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